Alaska will vote on raising minimum wage

Alaska will vote August 19th on a measure that would raise the state’s minimum wage and, like Washington, index future increases to the rate of inflation.

A citizen initiative campaign has submitted 1,100 signatures more than the required amount, with more petitions still to count, the Associated Press reported.

Alaska voters will, in August, vote on raising the state minimum wage, and will be deciding the fate of ultraconservative, Tea Party-backed Republican U.S. Senate candidate Joe Miller.

Under the initiative, the 49th State would raise its minimum wage from $7.75 an hour to $8.75 an hour on January 1, 2015. It would go up again to $9.75 an hour on January 1, 2016.

After that, Alaska’s minimum wage would be indexed to the rate of inflation, unless that results in a minimum wage that is less than a dollar over the federal minimum wage. In that case, Alaska’s minimum wage would go to a dollar over the federal minimum.

The vote will take place on the same day that Alaska voters nominate s Republican challenger to Democratic U.S. Senator Mark Begich.

The minimum wage battle is now — literally — underway from the Atlantic to the Pacific to the Arctic.

New Jersey voters opted in November for a higher minimum wage. Washington, D.C., and adjoining Montgomery and Prince Georges County, Maryland, have jointly created a higher minimum wage over a region populated by 8 million people.

President Obama has asked Congress to raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 an hour. The Senate is slated to vote in early March on the increase, although Republican House Speaker John Boehner has said he will not allow a vote in Congress’ lower chamber.

Efforts to increase Washington’s $9.34 an hour minimum wage appear stymied in the State Senate. But Mayor Ed Murray has a Seattle task force examining how the Emerald City can move to a $15 an hour minimum wage, such as the city of SeaTac approved in November.